Franois Bertrand

Diagnoses

Passions

Vocation

Notable

French army officer and necrophiliac, arrested in 1849 for two years of grave robbing involving freshly buried corpses of young girls looted from local cemeteries. He began to dream of women from the time he was eight-nine years old with onanism from the age of eight. By the ages of 13-14, he masturbated as much as eight times a day. He always loved to destroy; he did not play with toys, but with animals, attaining sexual thrills through cruelty. He mutilated animals, tearing out their entrails as he masturbated. His onanism fantasy came to involve the exercise of power over women, torture and desecration. Bertrand joined the French Army and became an efficient and popular NCO, as well as somewhat of a local Don Juan. He enjoyed normal sex. In June 1847, he robbed his first grave, that of a 16-year-old girl. In November 1847, he had his first coitus with a corpse, relating that "he did everything that a passionate lover does with a mistress." In March 1848, he had sex with four dead women. In spite of severe fits of depression and guilt, the impulse became overwhelming. Severe headaches would lead to such an urge to for sexual destruction that he would go to any lengths to find a body, swimming icy streams and digging in the earth until his fingers bled. In his passionate frenzy, his obsession with mutilation was total. He cut, hacked, stabbed and tore at body parts until no part of the corpse was left untouched, and then again performed onanism. Institutionalized, Bertrand represented a puzzling case for many years to students of abnormal psychology. In 1856, he moved to Le Havre. In his later life, he worked as clerk, mailman, and lighthouse keeper. He died on 25 February 1878. Link to Wikipedia biography